Two billing modes
- Pay-as-you-go — every worker node bills per hour at its plan’s hourly rate while it exists.
- Subscription — the cluster’s node set is a monthly commitment. Create it from the dashboard (checkout) or the API (the saved payment method is charged automatically). Growing the cluster (scale-up, new pool, HA upgrade) costs the pro-rated difference — collected at checkout from the dashboard, or charged automatically via the API — and raises the monthly price; shrinking credits the remainder back to your balance. Deleting the cluster converts the unused subscription value to account balance automatically.
Autoscaling and billing
Autoscaling never changes your subscription price. It only adds temporary hourly charges while extra nodes exist. Subscription cluster. Your monthly price covers the node count you committed to at checkout (the base). When the autoscaler adds nodes above the base, each extra node bills per hour, at the node plan’s hourly rate, only while it exists. When the autoscaler removes it, the charge stops. Your monthly subscription price stays the same in both directions. Example: you committed a pool of 2 nodes on the $9.99/month Starter plan (subscription: $19.98/month).
Only a manual scale (dashboard or API) changes the base, and your monthly price moves with it.
Pay-as-you-go cluster. There is no base. Every node bills per hour while it exists, so autoscaling from 2 to 3 nodes means 3 nodes’ hourly rates until it scales back to 2.
What appears on your invoice
A subscription cluster is itemised one line per node pool, priced at that pool’s own plan — so a cluster mixing plans reads honestly rather than showing a single lump:
Usage-based charges arrive on the monthly pay-as-you-go invoice instead, one line per category:
Storage and overage lines are totals per category, not per volume or per node — the per-resource breakdown is in the dashboard’s usage view.
What else bills
Full rates: Pricing.